5 A's 

The 5 A's summarize all the activities that a dental professional can do to help a tobacco user within 3−5 minutes in the dental settings.

1. Ask: About tobacco use every time.
2. Advise: Urge tobacco users to quit: Advising the patient to quit should be done in a clear, strong, and personalized manner.
3. Assess: Determine willingness to make a quit attempt: Assess how ready the patient currently is to quit tobacco use.
4. Assist: Provide help to move the individual toward a successful quit attempt.
5. Arrange: Schedule follow-up contacts or a referral to specialist support. Follow-up is most helpful to do it within the first weeks of a quit date and can be either in person or via telephone.  

Use the 5 A’s at every visit!

5 R's

The 5 R’s are the content areas that should be addressed in a motivational counseling intervention to help those who are not ready to quit.

1. Relevance Encourage the patient to indicate how quitting is personally relevant to him or her.
2. Risk Encourage the patient to identify potential negative consequences of tobacco use that are relevant to him or her.
3. Rewards Help the individual identify the possible benefits of quitting tobacco use.
4. Roadblocks Help the individual to identify possible obstacles to quitting, including those from his/her past quit attempts.
5. Repetition It might take more than just one brief intervention before a tobacco user becomes ready to quit.

Ask-Advise-Refer

The Ask-Advise-Refer:
Ask patients about tobacco use, advise patients to quit, and refer patients to other resources for additional assistance - such as the toll-free tobacco quitline, local group programs, and internet-based programs. This approach is applicable to any profession, but is particularly relevant to dental assistants, for whom implementation of the 5 A’s would be inappropriate.

Check out the UCSF prescription for change website.