An appeal to everyone who has gone ahead: create one role for a graduate waiting on internship.

I had a dream last night. In it, AMLSN, MLSCN and GMLD were seated at one table.

No speeches, no long communique. Just a register and a plan.

Every medical laboratory science graduate waiting for internship could sign up. Labs and diagnostics businesses could sign up too. Graduates were matched to real roles, with a named supervisor, a clear scope and a small monthly stipend. Records were kept. Nobody fell through the cracks. When the internship letter arrived, each graduate walked in already sharp.

It was working. It was beautiful. Then I woke up, and it was Wednesday morning in Lagos, and the dream was only a dream.

I have not been able to shake it, though. So let me turn it into an appeal.

In my last piece, I wrote about a trend that has been troubling me: licensed medical laboratory science graduates taking jobs unrelated to their profession while they wait for internship. I ended that piece with an invitation to lab owners and diagnostics businesses to say whether they would take a graduate volunteer. This article is the fuller version of that invitation.

Because here is the thing. We can tell graduates to be more strategic about how they wait, and we should. But a graduate can only walk through a door that someone has opened.

The waiting room is getting fuller

The sequence is fixed. MLSCN reminded a fresh set of inductees this October that internship must be completed before NYSC, and that a full practicing license comes before national service. So until the internship slot arrives, everything else waits.

Now look at the supply side. In December 2023, MLSCN announced plans to double the admission quota for the 48 universities approved to run the Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science program, with a similar expansion for 131 colleges of health technology running technician programs. The reasoning was sound. Nigeria needs more laboratory professionals, and many are leaving for jobs abroad.

How many graduates does that system produce each year? Here is the honest answer: I could not find a published national figure. So I did some rough arithmetic from recent induction ceremonies.

If cohorts across the 48 universities fall somewhere between the smallest and largest of these, the country is inducting roughly 1,800 to 4,100 new medical laboratory scientists a year. That is my estimate, not an official number, and I would welcome a correction from anyone with the real figure. The students admitted under the doubled quotas will only start graduating towards the end of this decade, so the pipeline is set to grow.

And on the other side of the ledger? MLSCN publishes a list of approved internship institutions, but I could not find a published national count of internship slots per year. As far back as 2019, AMLSN was publicly warning that fresh graduates were waiting years for placement.

What this really means is simple. Our schools are producing professionals faster than our institutions can absorb them as interns, and nobody can yet say precisely by how much. In that gap, it becomes survival of the fittest. Graduates with connections find their way in. Everyone else drifts, sometimes into work that has nothing to do with the lab.

If not us, then who?

Those of us who have gone ahead know this road. Many of us waited too. Some of us were lucky enough to have a senior colleague who said come and sit with me in the lab while you wait. That one decision changed the shape of a career.

So this is my appeal, to lab owners, hospital lab managers, diagnostics distributors, manufacturers with local teams, research groups and public health programs. Create one role. Just one. A defined, supervised, short term placement for a graduate waiting on internship, with a stipend attached.

One role sounds small. Multiply it across the private labs, hospital labs, distributors and diagnostics companies in Lagos alone, and the waiting room becomes noticeably emptier. Multiply it across the country and we change what the wait means for an entire generation of scientists.

What a good graduate placement looks like

• A clear scope. Sample reception, QC records, inventory, documentation, customer follow up, data entry for a study. Write it down before the graduate arrives.

• A named supervisor. A licensed medical laboratory scientist who signs off on the work and answers questions.

• A stipend. Even ₦30,000 to ₦50,000 a month covers transport and data, and it tells the graduate their time has value. If you can match the ₦77,000 NYSC allowance, even better.

• A fixed duration. Three to six months, renewable by agreement, ending when the internship letter arrives.

• A logbook and a reference letter. The graduate records what they did. You sign it and write a letter at the end.

• Respect for the rules. A graduate on a provisional license works under supervision and does not independently sign or release results. Your placement should make that boundary clear from day one.

What your business gets back

This is not charity, and I would not sell it to you as charity. A trained graduate takes real load off your team: the paperwork that piles up before an inspection, the QC charts nobody has time to update, the customer calls that never get returned. You also get a ready talent pipeline. The graduate who spent four months in your lab is the intern you already know and the hire you do not need to gamble on later.

There is reputation too. Graduates talk. Labs known for developing young scientists attract the best of them, and that advantage compounds year after year.

A few honest worries, answered

• What about liability? Keep the scope to supervised and administrative work, document it, and the risk is manageable. Speak to your own adviser if you are unsure.

• Will they leave once internship comes? Yes, and that is the design. You are building a relationship, and that relationship tends to come back when they need a job.

• I cannot afford a stipend right now. Then start with what you can offer: lunch, transport, structured learning and a strong reference. Something structured beats nothing at all.

Back to the dream

I still think the dream can happen. A shared register, a matching system, agreed standards and a stipend floor, held together by the people who already lead this profession. I will lay out what that structure could look like in my next piece, because a dream deserves a plan.

But none of us needs to wait for the structure to start. One lab, one role, one graduate, this quarter.

If you will create a role, say so in the comments, and tell us your city. If you are a graduate waiting on internship, drop your state so the right doors can find you. Let’s build the waiting room we wish we had.

Till the next edition,

Nancy.