Integrated 5 A’s Smoking Cessation Intervention Program
The 5 A’s smoking cessation plan is a brief intervention approach developed by the US Public Health Service to enhance motivation for smokers to change their behavior. Patagonia Health’s EHR has a built in assessment tool to provide an easy way to conduct the 5 A’s approach in helping patients quit smoking and document their progress.
The 5 A’s Approach includes:
Ask: Take just a few minutes with your patients to learn about their tobacco use and habits.
Advise: Provide an educational and personalized message to the smoker to help them understand the health risks of smoking. Include the dangers of second-hand smoke as well as share language they can use to help peer smokers quit
Assess: Determine the patient’s willingness to quit – does the patient want to quit, or have no desire to quit or just not yet.
Assist: Provide help for patients to quit smoking. Walk them through the 5R’s exercises:
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- Relevance – Discuss why and how quitting is relevant to the patient?
- Risks – Discuss the risks they take by smoking
- Rewards – Identify the rewards they would benefit from by quitting
- Roadblocks – Address the roadblocks the patient will face and help find a way around them
- Repetition – Review the 5 A’s at every visit
Arrange: Schedule appointments and follow-ups with specialists as needed.
Benefits
- An easy-to follow assessment tool that can be flexible in its delivery method
- Brief Interventions only last 1-15 minutes
- Easy documentation and planning tool for patient goals to quit smoking
- Collected data becomes part of patient’s medical record