Sam Powdrill, PA
Associate Professor, University of Kentucky
Sam currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Physician Assistant Program at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. In this role, Sam teaches and mentors students in many of the practical skills that they learn as they go through their PA program.
In 2004, Sam returned to the United States after serving as the Coordinator for the Eye Unit at Tenwek Hospital in Bomet, Kenya. Tenwek is a well known Christian mission teaching Hospital serving the people of Southwestern Kenya In the thirteen years he spent at Tenwek, Sam and his wife played an integral role in the establishment and expansion of the hospital’s Eye Unit. They were Stationed at Tenwek with one of its partner organizations, Christian Blind Mission International (CBMI) - one of the oldest and largest organizations serving the blind and disabled throughout the developing world. Sam focused on developing low cost eye care services and eye surgery delivery to this largely unserved rural community. Today, Tenwek Eye Unit is the major eye care facility for about one million people, providing in- and outpatient services, eye surgery, training programs for volunteer eye health care workers, and mobile eye care outreach.
Sam attended Kentucky Mountain Bible College, where he received his Associate of Arts in Biblical Studies. Sam earned his Bachelors of Science in Nursing from the School of Nursing at Indiana Wesleyan University, and continued on to obtain a Diploma of Community Eye Health from the Institute of Ophthalmology in London, and a Masters of Philosophy (with an emphasis in community eye health education), from the University of London. He received NCCPA certification as physician assistant and surgical assistant following his graduation from the Physician Assistant Program at the University of North Dakota. After eye surgery training at the Kenya Medical Training College in Nairobi he was certified in Kenya as an Ophthalmic Clinical Officer and cataract surgeon.
Each year Sam devotes some of his time to eye surgery and training of eye surgeons at various underserved places in the world.
