Retirement for general surgeon Hans Rath, M.D., meant a chance to go back to school.
For two years, Dr. Rath has volunteered as an assistant in the gross anatomy laboratory in the UNMC College of Medicine. In addition to his regularly scheduled lab hours, Dr. Rath attended all 65 medical school lectures to gain as much knowledge as possible for answering students’ questions.
For his dedication to volunteering, he is the recipient of the College of Medicine’s April Volunteer Faculty of the Month Award.
“Dr. Rath brought his extensive experience in the operating room into the laboratory and taught students the relevance of what they were being asked to learn,” said Thomas Rosenquist, M.D., vice chancellor for research and former chairman of the department of cell biology, anatomy and genetics. “He attended all of the medical school lectures, taught students in the lab for 90 hours, assisted in teaching the 18 living anatomy sessions and for an additional 90 hours assisted in the lab with physical therapy and physician assistant students.”
Despite the amount of hours Dr. Rath put in to volunteering, he doesn’t think his contributions are out of the ordinary.
“In 1952 when I graduated from UNMC, the entire clinical faculty was made up of volunteers,” he said. “It’s a long-standing tradition.”
Dr. Rath thought he needed a little extra knowledge and preparation to work with students, so he sat alongside them during the medical school lectures, absorbing the same materials they were expected to learn.
“Being a surgeon, I’m not really an anatomist. I felt it was my obligation to sit there with the students and listen to the lectures,” he said.
Volunteering is nothing new for Dr. Rath. Since he returned to Nebraska in 1960 from a five-year residency at King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., he’s given his time to students.
“For the first few years I assisted in the anatomy lab as that’s what young surgeons normally did in those days. I also did rotations as an attending surgeon at the Douglas County Hospital,” he said. “In my private practice, I did most of my work at the Blair Memorial Community Hospital, where there were always medical students on rotation.”
But spending time at UNMC held different rewards for Dr. Rath, the kind that only a 74-year-old surgeon with 50 years of experience can have.
“Some of the students are grandkids of my colleagues and old classmates,” he said. “I get a kick out of that.”