Palliative Medicine is a relatively new specialty in India. We at St. John's have established and sustained the specialty by networking both in the institution and outside the institution . A paper was published in an indexed journal on our journey through networking.

Our main area of focus is symptom management in patients, the most important being pain management. Our research is also focused on pain , other symptoms and the palliative requirements in patients. Qualitative study is an integral part of palliative care research and we have a few publications using this method. Currently we have two ongoing research in the department on, doctors' perspective on palliative needs in stroke patients and palliative care needs in heart failure patients .

End of life care forms an integral part of palliative care. A study that looked at health care professional's ( doctors and nurses ) opinion on advance directives for themselves , won the third best poster prize in the recently concluded Palliative Care Conference at Coimbatore