PITTSBURGH -- Dr. Doris Cope, director of UPMC's Pain Medicine Program, is passionate about pain.

Seventy-million Americans experience chronic pain. Cope says pain medicine is a relatively new specialty.

"It's not just sticking needles in patients, not just giving prescriptions for pain medication, it's evaluation and treatment," Cope said.

At UPMC's pain medicine clinic, a treatment team evaluates a patient and tries to come up with a plan to alleviate their pain and allow them to function better.

Cope sees patients with all kinds of pain; arthritis pain, cancer pain, muscular skeletal pain, headaches and migraines.

She says they treat the whole person.

"We have a pain rehab program. We have a psychologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist and we try to help people function better. We try to help people reach their maximum function and cause no harm while we're doing it," Cope said.

Trained as an anesthesiologist, Cope says she became interested in helping ease people's pain at an early age.

"I was 10 years old. My grandmother had pancreatic cancer and I remember the terrible pain she had. Everybody was helpless; they didn't want to give her morphine because she would get addicted. I remember wishing I could do something and trying to play the piano for her, which was very poor at the time. So I think that caused more pain than alleviated pain. When I went into medicine it was just a natural fit. There is nothing more rewarding than taking someone who's nonfunctional and having them happy and pain-free or better than pain-free," Cope said.

Cope and her team try to help cancer patients have a better quality of life.

"Cancer patients … they may only have a few months to live, but if they can live those months pain-free and be with their families, that is a very sacred time. There is nothing more rewarding to me than making people better," Cope said.

To contact UPMC's Pain Medicine Program, call 412-784-5119 or go to www.pain.pitt.edu.