Background: Hard-to-heal ulcers consider significant challenges for healthcare professionals. The Wound Healing Society categorizes them into categories: venous, arterial, diabetic and pressure wounds. Patient experience is important for the quality of health care, patient-centeredness and increasing the efficiency of care. Not understanding the patient's experience leads to serious consequences and increased patient's suffering.

Aim: To describe patients' experiences of living with hard-to-heal leg ulcers.

Method: The study was a qualitative literature study. All articles were searched from databases Cinahl and PubMed and analyzed with Friberg’s five-step model.

Results: The theme of living with emotional stress describes how patients with severe leg ulcers experienced feelings such as worry, fear, depression. The theme of living with a changed self-image describes loss of personal integrity. The theme of a functioning care relationship demands good communication between the patient and the care provided to meet the patient's needs. The theme of feeling exposed describes how patients' experiences are affected when their needs were not met. The theme living with reduced activity capacity describes affecting dressing, social engagement and movement. The theme is living with pain and lack of sleep due to the impact of leg wounds.

Conclusion: Patients with hard-to-heal leg ulcers are affected in several ways, which contributed to negative consequences. Nurses' responsibility for care needs to be clarified. When nurses take responsibility for nursing care, which includes the core competencies, patients with difficult-to-heal wounds can have their nursing needs met.