Samuel M. Miller, MD, MHS

Dr. Miller completed his undergraduate degree at Brown University, where he studied the perception of risk within the Department of Psychology. After completing a post-baccalaureate program and spending two years working as a neurophysiology technologist for spine surgeries, he returned to Brown University for his medical degree at the Warren Alpert Medical School. This foundation informed his commitment to understanding how patients and clinicians make decisions in complex, high-stakes medical settings and shaped his approach to patient-centered surgical care.

He completed residency training in General Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. During residency, Dr. Miller pursued a Master of Health Science degree, focusing on postoperative outcomes in older adults under the mentorship of both surgical and medical faculty. This interdisciplinary training reinforced the value of integrating surgical and nonsurgical perspectives to improve outcomes for older and medically complex patients. Motivated by these interests, Dr. Miller returned to clinical residency and helped create new educational pathways that allowed surgical trainees to rotate with geriatrics and palliative care teams. After completing residency, he completed a fellowship in Surgical Critical Care. He is currently a fellow in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, with the goal of learning to advance compassionate, multidisciplinary care for critically ill and surgical patients.

Dr. Miller’s academic interests center on research investigating preoperative decision-making and postoperative outcomes in older adults. His work also includes quality improvement initiatives aimed at standardizing care for older adults undergoing surgery and developing multidisciplinary teams to support the unique needs of older surgical patients. As part of this work, he served on the implementation team that achieved American College of Surgeons Geriatric Surgery Verification for the West Haven VA and is currently collaborating with the Trauma Surgery Division to revise clinical guidelines for the care of older adults following traumatic injury. He is particularly interested in care models that align surgical treatment with patient goals, functional outcomes, and quality of life.