You Know Your Friend is a Prescriber When...

Drunk texts are a bad idea. E-scripts often read like drunk texts.
The only idea worse than this is texting people by First Name as they are listed in your phone.
I have received a number of texts not intended for me. Sometimes I get a follow up text saying: "Sorry, wrong Chris".
Sometimes I play along and act as if I am their intended to see how long it takes them to discover their error.

Prescribers' friends must receive a lot of these miscommunications if they text the way they send electronic prescriptions. How many times have we received e-scripts for a medication that we knew was wrong? When we researched it a little, just to be sure, we noticed it was the first product listed on an EMR dropdown menu. Just for phun, we call the office anyway and ask what the prescriber was thinking. This is usually how the conversation transpires.
CP: Hi.
Prescriber's Office Of Fat Fingers: Hi.
CP: How are you?
POOFF: I am well. How are you?
CP: Baffled and Confused.
POOFF: Why ever so?
CP: It's this e-script Dr. Zoffis sent me.
POOFF: <reads it to me> Okay. What seems to be so baffling?
CP: First, the fact that you think I can't read. Second, that Dr. Zoffis selected Lovastatin ER from the menu.
POOFF: That's what the patient always gets.
CP: Keep reading the patient profile.
POOFF: Uh-huh. It says Lovastatin 40mg right here.
CP: Okay. Now scroll all the way across the e-script the good doctor sent to me today.
POOFF: <mumble mumble> ...40mg ER.
CP: Ja. ER. Does Der Doctor require Die ER?
POOFF: Nein.
CP: I did not think so. Is he seeing other patients?
POOFF: Yes.
CP: Do any of them take Lovastatin 40mg ER?
POOFF: No.
CP: I wonder how many of them have received the same drunk text. Next time I'm just going to play along if for no other reason than to see how far I can take it. "Ja. I am Inge from Sweden."