When a patient goes to the doctors, or the psychiatrist, or even the dentist, they should be asked whether they smoke. If they do, the patient should be advised to quit. UC Davis's Elisa Tong conducted a survey that shows while medical personnel may follow those two A's, as few as twenty five percent follow the rest of the five A method.

"Now, a lot of those times, the health professionals don't have time to do the rest of those five A's such as arranging follow up," says Tong. "And, we identified a number of the barriers people had, and some of them like being a current smoker, people were less likely to report helping a smoker to quit."

The survey also shows that workers in the medical industry smoke much less than the general population rate. Nationwide, one in five people smoke. In the medical profession, 13 percent of registered nurses light up, while only six percent of all other workers identify as smokers.