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.
- Ask: About tobacco use every time.
- Advise: Urge tobacco users to quit: Advising the patient to quit should be done in a clear, strong, and personalized manner.
- Assess: Determine willingness to make a quit attempt: Assess how ready the patient currently is to quit tobacco use.
- Assist: Provide help to move the individual toward a successful quit attempt.
- 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.
- Relevance Encourage the patient to indicate how quitting is personally relevant to him or her.
- Risk Encourage the patient to identify potential negative consequences of tobacco use that are relevant to him or her.
- Rewards Help the individual identify the possible benefits of quitting tobacco use.
- Roadblocks Help the individual to identify possible obstacles to quitting, including those from his/her past quit attempts.
- 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.
