Pain assessment is a significant issue in post-operative patients. Surgical ward nurses are responsible to assess and document patient’s pain postoperatively and provide pain medications as per the guidance of physicians. Ward nurses usually underestimate patient’s pain which may delay pain relief and post-operative recovery of surgical patients. Main purpose of this study was to observe the practice of pain assessment and its documentation by nurses in surgical ward of tertiary care hospital. In this study, all adult patients after general surgery, gynecology and orthopedic surgery were included. Patient’s medical records were reviewed to see documentation of static and dynamic pain scores, any rescue analgesia provided and associated complications for first 24 hours postoperatively and recorded in specific data collection form. Total 260 patients were included in this study in which 35.8% were male and 64.2% were female. For post-operative pain relief, PCA (Patient controlled analgesia) was used in 63% of patients and epidural analgesia in 37 % of the patients. As per documentation, 15 patients (5.8%) had moderate pain at rest (static pain) on arrival in surgical ward and 77 patients (29.6%) had moderate pain on movement (dynamic pain) however only seven patients received rescue analgesia on arrival in surgical ward. Post-operative pain assessment and documentation was found appropriate in this study, but significant gaps were observed in postoperative pain relief by surgical ward nurses during first 24 hours.