We've all seen this memo, but no one seems to know what it means exactly.

I've been speaking with the stakeholders I can reach, to find out what this memo means for the pharmacy internship program in Nigeria.

200 likes and I'll do a thread for pharmacy students by lunchtime.

Disclaimer:
This thread is based on unofficial conversations.

I'm not a civil servant.

I don't speak for the PSN or any other government organization.

I don't know anything about young doctors, lab scientists or any other health care practitioners.

Here goes

1/
Pharmacy internship after graduation can either be in an accredited government institution or in a private company.

For private companies like community pharmacies /pharma companies do not have any regulation regarding how much to pay pharmacy interns.

2/
For Government institutions, there are federal government institutions and state government institutions.

The FG institutions are very competitive to get placement, and generally pay more than the other options.

This much is factual.

3/
Now from what I'm hearing, our association wants us to have a centralised internship placement for pharmacists, and are pushing for it with the FG.

This will help to ease the bottleneck & manage the internship program better.

Centralising internship program means our association will be the one to post interns to various institutions immediately after oath taking, rather than interns hustling for placement by themselves and waiting years to get a placement.

Currently, interns working at a government institution are placed on a civil service grade level (I don't know which GL) and are paid the salary accrued to that GL.

What the memo says is that the government wants to remove the internship program from that civil service grade level scheme, because internship is classified as a training program and not everyone that does internship will continue in civil service.

Since an intern is still technically being trained, the internship program should run as a training and not as grade level civil service scheme.
Grade level civil service is ONLY for people that have a step wise progressive career in civil service.
Which an intern is not.

For payment, since Internship is no longer on grade level scheme, the payment for interns will now be determined by a different commission that handles the salaries of other people in the civil service. Salaries are not affected.

Summary
1. We want to centralise internship placement to ease the bottleneck.

2. Interns are still in training.

3. Grade level scheme of service is a full employment /career on its own (one year internship is not)

4. Intern Salaries will still be paid, no issue.

That's what I got from my conversations.

If I'm wrong, I will welcome healthy corrections on the thread.
I'm no expert.

If you need more info, join in tomorrow for the PSN town hall meeting with our President Mazi.

Stay up to date and don't panic.

See you there!