Postoperative pain causes numerous disorders in systemic homeostasis. It may result in various complications prolonging the period of convalescence and making the rehabilitation difficult, or even being dangerous to life. A nurse becomes irreplaceable in the process of pain evaluation just after surgical procedures since the pain intensity constitutes the basis for later treatment decisions. The aim of the research is the evaluation of postoperative pain in patients after thoracic and abdominal surgical procedures. 50 thoracosurgical patients and 50 general surgical patients were involved in the research. Patients were selected at random. A visual-analogue scale was used for pain evaluation and the categorisation table was used for the evaluation of patients' self-care ability. Statistical analysis was performed by means of STATISTICA 6 package (StatSoft, Inc). The results prove that in thoracosurgical patients pain intensity is lower and there is no dependence on the operation performed, as in the case of patients after surgical procedures within the abdominal cavity. Statistically significant differences were observed between groups of patients and the analgesic drugs used as well as pain intensity. The evaluation of patients' self-care ability does not depend on the intensity of pain declared by patients.