Dr Sam Milliken retires from St Vincent’s Hospital at the end of June, 2026. He has spent a lifetime looking after people with blood cancers and blood disorders.
If you’ve spent any time around TLR, you’ll know his name. Dr Sam is our patron, and a genuine pioneer in his field. He’s also the haematologist who looked after Trace Richey, the man whose experience inspired The TLR Foundation. And this is the part that matters most. He’s one of the loveliest people you could ever hope to meet.
TLR has been incredibly blessed to have Dr Sam Milliken as its patron.
More than thirty years of his career were spent at St Vincent’s. His retirement felt like the right time to look back. Not just at what he’s done, but at the thousands of people whose lives look different because he was in the room. He isn’t going anywhere as far as we’re concerned. Dr Sam is staying on as our patron, and we’re very glad of it. But some moments are worth pausing for. This is one of them.
Dr Sam Milliken, the kind of doctor people remember
When word got around that Dr Sam was retiring, some people cried. That tells you most of what you need to know about him. You don’t get that reaction after a career in medicine by being brilliant on paper, although he certainly is that. There’s another way you earn it. You earn it by sitting with people on the worst days of their lives and making them feel like they had a fighting chance.
Dr Sam has cared for more people with blood cancers and blood disorders than he could ever count. Thousands of them. He’s a genuine pioneer in his field, one of the people who helped shape stem cell transplantation in this country. But behind all of that are real mornings, real families in waiting rooms, and real phone calls that went one way or the other. He was the steady voice through every bit of it. The doctor who explained things properly, who didn’t rush, who treated the person and not just the blood count. So many people are alive today, getting on with their now ordinary lives, with families and careers, all because of Sam.
Sam Milliken was there near the start of something big, too. St Vincent’s ran some of Australia’s earliest transplants using donors who weren’t family. Back then, a matched stranger was the only hope a lot of patients had. That’s the whole idea TLR was built on, and Dr Sam was living it before most of us had heard of it. Brilliant as he is, the brilliance isn’t why people love him. They love him because of how he made them feel when it mattered most.
Where it all started
For everyone at TLR, this one is personal. Dr Sam didn’t just treat Trace. He sat with him, steadied his family, and brought the same calm that so many others came to rely on through the hardest stretch of their lives.
Years later, St Vincent’s rebuilt the haematology ward. The community that grew up around Trace threw everything at it. There were head shaves, a skydive and many City2Surf runs, all to raise $300,000 to fund the Trace Richey Patient Room. It’s the very room where Dr Sam treated Trace during his transplant. The doctor, the patient, the room, all tied together in one place that’s still caring for people today.
You can draw a straight line here. From Dr Sam sitting with Trace, to the room that now carries Trace’s name, to every donor who joins the stem cell donor registry because of a story that started there. That’s a rare thing to be part of. Sam never set out to be woven so deeply into what we do. He poured enormous heart into his work, year after year, and the connection grew from there.
Dr Sam with Annabel Horne and her son Robbie, recruiting new stem cell donors at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre.
Thank you, and enjoy every minute
So this is us saying it properly. Thank you, Dr Sam. For everyone you looked after, for the families you steadied, and for the way you carried people through, whatever the outcome. Thank you for caring for Trace. And thank you for throwing yourself at the City2Surf twice to raise money for the cause. It famously cost you a toenail. You reminded us about that one for years, and fair enough.
Retirement is well and truly owed. After a lifetime of early mornings and incredibly hard conversations, enjoy every lazy morning coming your way.
And here’s the part we’re most grateful for. This isn’t goodbye. Dr Sam has been part of who we are from the beginning, he’s staying on as our patron, and he’s not going anywhere.
We just wanted to mark the moment. People like Sam Milliken don’t come along often, and the ones lucky enough to have been in his care already know that.
Enjoy it, Dr Sam. You’ve more than earned it. And maybe give the running shoes a rest.
Dr Sam’s a legend. He saves lives.