Among the approaches used to encourage the practice of a more humane medicine are narrative medicine and patient empowerment. Narrative medicine is a way of educating physicians, nurses and other providers that uses storytelling (and active listening) to emphasize the humanity of patient and provider, enabling the "physician to practice medicine with empathy, reflection, professionalism, and trustworthiness."[5] Patient empowerment seeks to create an equal partnership between doctors and their patients, placing values at the center of the healthcare encounter.[1][2] Both of the practices emphasize the importance of the human experience in the practice of medicine, and help to ensure that the humanity of the patient is not obscured in a morass of lab results, patient charts, and insurance regulations. Humanistic medicine strives to create ideal and balanced care that sacrifices neither cutting-edge science nor the gentle art of creating a caring relationship. Various health professional schools across the U.S. have begun to integrate humanistic medical teaching into their curricula in an effort to offset what some view as an over-emphasis on medical technology to the detriment of individual patient care