This study explores how papers published in internationaljournals in palliative and end-of-life care report ethical approval andinformed consent. A literature search following PRISMA guidelines wasconducted in PubMed, the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, theProQuest Social Science Premium Collection, PsycINFO, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). A total of169 empirical studies from 101 journals were deductively coded andanalysed. The results showed that 5% of publications provided no information on ethical approval, 12% reported minimal information, 56%reported rudimentary information, and 27% reported comprehensivedetails. We also found that 13% did not report any information oninformed consent, 17% reported minimal information, 50% reported rudimentary information, and 19% reported comprehensive details. The prevalence of missing and incomplete ethical statements and inadequatereporting of informed consent processes in recent publications raises concerns and highlights the need for improvement. We suggest that journalsadvocate high reporting standards and potentially reject papers that donot meet ethical requirements, as this is the quickest path toimprovement.