Current status of palliative care delivery and self-reported practice in ICUs in Japan: a nationwide cross-sectional survey of physician directors.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateThis study was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the Ethical Guidelines for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects of the Japanese Government. Participation in the study was voluntary, and participants were considered to be willing to participate in the study when they checked the items on the questionnaire indicating their intention to participate and returned the questionnaire. The participants were given the opportunity to withdraw their intention to participate even after returning the questionnaire. This study was conducted with the approval of the ethics committee of Tohoku University (No. 2020-1-231) and Kobe University School of Medicine (No. B200018). Consent for publicationThis paper has been reviewed by all co-authors and permission for publication has been granted. Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests to disclose. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests to disclose."

"Funding This study was funded by a grant from the Japan Hospice and Palliative Care Research Foundation for 2019–2021. No grant number was provided."