Dickinson, North Dakota goes through a lot of doctors and nurses.  As I explained in a recent previous blog post, I see brochures, pamphlets, newspaper advertisements, and press releases about a new medical professional arriving at an office, clinic, or facility in Dickinson, and then within a couple of months, they are out of here.

It really does not look good on a medical professional’s resume, to accept a position, and then leave within just a few months.  It looks like something went wrong, like there might possibly be something wrong with this medical professional.  It makes a prospective employer wonder what went wrong, what happened, and is this person likely to do this again?

A medical professional sure had better have a good reason for taking off so quickly.  They do, “It was Dickinson, North Dakota.”

As I explained in a recent previous blog post, a medical professional could spend half of their income on a place to live in Dickinson, and they would still be living amongst dirty uneducated oil field workers, and having to listen to and smell their dirty diesel truck loudly idling right outside their windows.  In addition to this, the local facility administrators and the local nurses are ignorant, locally educated, primitive, backwards, mean, hostile, unfriendly, not cooperative, not helpful, and hateful.  This is why Dickinson goes through so many doctors and nurses.

In order to fill the medical staff shortages, many facilities in Dickinson hire doctors and nurses through temporary agencies.  These medical professionals are referred to as “locums”.  I asked a doctor if they were referred to as a “locum”, and they said yes, actually, more formally they were referred to as a “locum tenens”.

I had at least three years of French, which is based on Latin, and one year of Latin, and it was annoying and puzzling to me that the temporary medical professionals were referred to as “locums” or “locum tenens”, because these words have nothing to do with medicine, and I wondered what the hell they were talking about.  The literal translation of “locum tenens” means “place holder”, I looked it up.

Back in a more civilized time in world history, temporary medical professionals were referred to as “locum tenens” or “place holder”, because they were merely filling in for a medical professional who was absent or on leave.  I was reading this, and I was thinking to myself about Dickinson, “Yeah, right, absent or on leave, Ha!”

I have got to find a better Latin name for the medical professionals who come to Dickinson, North Dakota to fill the staff shortages which are a result of the hostile hateful local administrators, nurses, and poor living conditions in Dickinson.  What is a Latin phrase for coming to work in a horrible place, or what is a Latin phrase for coming to work where the local co-workers and administrators keep driving people away?

Using an English to Latin translation, “working in a horrible place” translates to “opus horrendo loco”.  “Working with bad people” translates to “mala operatus est populus”.  “This place sucks” translates to “sugit loco isto”.

I think that advertisements for “locum tenens” in Dickinson, North Dakota should be supplemented with “sugit loco isto”, to be more accurate and not misleading.