Background: Nursing care is an important concern in the field of pain management as it addresses situated efforts to achieve a person-centered care in pain management. Although it is clear that the effectiveness of the pain management practice needs to be improved, there is limited knowledge about the pain management practices of Thai nurses. This study address if Critical Incident Technique be a used to increase our understanding of Pain management in a Thai context.

Methods: Critical Incident Technique was used to explore postoperative pain management provided by nurses in a surgical ward in Thailand. A purposive sample of nine registered nurses over a five-week period using a semi-structured interview guide were conducted and collected. 

Findings: All 69 situations were used to illustrate the successful and unsuccessful aspects of managing postoperative pain, and included Engagement is a manner of commitments, Availability is characteristic in the practicalities of managing pain for the patients, and Imbalance is being inconsistency between the patients' needs and nurses maintain their undertaking routines. 

Discussion: Nurses’ experience helped to grasp and understand how nurses treat pain in the postoperative setting; this study was conducted in order to further the understanding of this topic. The result show that Critical Incident Technique can serve to expand our knowledge how existing guidelines are facilitated by nurses. Further, the knowledge gained can serve as foundation to development of new nursing guidelines and/or policies in pain management, including improving nursing skills and education programs in pain management settings.