Central Placement Of Pharmacy Interns By PSN

Pharmacy interns

The major challenge pharmacy graduates in Nigeria face is internship placement. Internship is a one year compulsory programme design to teach pharmacy graduates in one or more aspects of the profession. It was introduced some years back.

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Getting an internship placement used to be very easy. So many pharmacy graduates then had two or more placements. They were opportuned to make choices. However, the story today is different. Many pharmacy graduates are roaming the streets in search of internship placement. They spend years and money in this battle. This is because the number of schools has multipled whereas the number of internship centers has refused to grow at a relative rate.

PSN Central Placement

To alleviate the suffering of interns, the leadership of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) have written to the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) on the way forward. They suggested a central placement for all interns in the country. They also send out their request to the federal ministry of health on how to achieve that.

The idea is not new in the world. Some countries are already doing it. But the number of countries doing it is still few.

The federal ministry of health wanted to implement the project but was faced with opposition. This was because the minister in his remark wanted to implement it for only medical graduates.

With so much delay from the government, the leadership of PSN took the bold step by requesting for a self central placement. The initial moves met some bottlenecks which has been resolved. And it seems all  is now set for the full implementation of the central placement for all pharmacy interns in Nigeria

In the month of August 2019 a request for application for place of internship was sent out from the office of the President of the PSN. The notice requested applicants to give their curriculum vitae (CV). They were asked to include the state they are living in and where they want placement including salary expectations. However, the information did not ask the applicants to include their area of interest. For the central placement to be effective, applicants need to specify their area of interest, whether community or other areas of interest, hence a second notice was sent out in November 2019.

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Graduates who are yet to find a place for their mandatory one year internship should kindly send their CV with necessary documents to chimezie.ukpai@psnnational.org clearly specifying their area of interest.

The

The leadership of the PSN is committed to bringing to an end the suffering of our young pharmacists by ensuring automatic provision of places for internship, support for employment post National youth service corps (NYSC) and to provide business management and financial support for pharmaceutical start-ups.

Extract: Pharm. (Mazi) Sam Ohuabunwa_OFR, MON, NPOM, FPSN_President, PSN.

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