Introduction:
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive disease. The symptoms which occur at its onset are often ignored by patients, and what makes a patient seek professional medical help is exertional dyspnea which occurs in the advanced stage of the disease. Objective. The aim of the study is defining the relationship between self-care activities undertaken by patients with COPD at home and in hospital and factors responsible for this condition.

Material and Methods:
The study was carried out in 2008 in one of the hospitals in the Rzeszów Region. It was voluntary and covered 110 patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Diagnostic survey was used in the form of a nonstandardized questionnaire designed by the author, based on the present state of knowledge and own many-years experiences in work with this category of patients.

Results:
As a result of the conducted statistical analysis, several crucial differences were found between self-care at home(68.80 scores) and in hospital (71.45 scores) (Z=12.86; p<0.01). Statistically significant differences were observed in the amount of problems the respondents had to cope with at home, compared to those in hospital. It was noted that patients who used information concerning how to live with the disease provided by the physicians or nurses had had a significantly level of the self care (72.64 scores), compared to those who obtained information from other sources (66.93 scores), the difference being statistically significant (p=0.02).

Conclusions:
1) Strong motivation of patients with COPD exerts a significance effect on their level of self-care. 2) Hospitalisation and obtaining information concerning their illness from medical staff (doctors, nurses) has a significant effect on the level of self-care in COPD patients. 3) In the examined group of patients, the effect of socio-medical factors on the level of selfcare was insignificant.