Assessing delivery of the five 'As' for patient-centered counseling

The '5As' model of behavior change provides a sequence of evidence-based clinician and office practice behaviors (Assess, Advise, Agree, Assist, Arrange) that can be applied in primary care settings to address a broad range of behaviors and health conditions. Although the 5As approach is becoming more widely adopted as a strategy for health behavior change counseling, practical and standardized assessments of 5As delivery are not widely available. This article provides clinicians and researchers with alternatives for assessment of 5As implementation for both quality improvement, and for research and evaluation purposes, and presents several practical tools they may wish to use. Sample instruments for tracking delivery of the 5As and related tools that are in the public domain are provided to facilitate integration of self-management support into clinical care. We discuss the strengths and limitations of the various assessment approaches. Promising and practical measures to assess the 5As exist for both quality improvement and research purposes. Additional validation is needed on almost all current procedures, and both clinicians and researchers are encouraged to use these instruments and share the resulting data.