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Spring 2014 • Kentucky
Samuel Powdrill
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Eye Surgeon to One Million People
By Martha Evans Sparks, Staff Writer
Sam Powdrill has never been to medical
school, but he has been almost every place
else. Now an assistant professor in the
Physician Assistant Studies program at the
University of Kentucky College of Health
Sciences, with the school’s blessing he spends
two months a year in Kenya, or aboard the
Mercy Ship, or taking some of his students to
the Dominican Republic as part of their clinical training. And everywhere he goes, he does
eye surgery.
Born and raised in India by his missionary
parents, his early education was in a British
boarding school in India. (He speaks three
of the numerous Indian languages.) He came
home to attend Kentucky Mountain Bible
College, near Jackson, where he met his
wife, Rachel. Both earned R.N. degrees from
Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, IN.
They worked as missionary nurses, first in
India, then in Honduras. With no physicians
in these areas at the time, Powdrill began
to read medical texts and shadow visiting
doctors. He soon realized he needed more
training.
He enrolled at the Institute of
Ophthalmology in London in 1988, and
found the love of his life: the study and treatment of eye disorders and diseases. Because
he did not have an M.D. degree, he was
not qualified to practice in London or the
United States, so one of his instructors helped
him find a job in research in Sierra Leone.
After more than two years there, he joined
German-based Christian Blind Mission
International (CBMI). Their proposal to
Tenwek Hospital, a 300-bed mission hospital
in Bomet, Kenya, 225 miles northwest of
Nairobi, resulted in the hospital creating a
pla