Claire Fagin

Claire M. Fagin RN, Ph.D, FAAN FRCN is an American nurse, educator, academic, and consultant. She is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing.

She has a Bachelor's Degree in Science from Wagner College, a Master's in Nursing from Columbia University and a Ph.D from New York University, all in New York City.

Throughout her career in her native United States she has been involved in leading thinking and practice in nurse education, nursing and health policy, geriatric nursing, program leadership and administration. She led cutting-edge programs at New York University, Lehman College and the University of Pennsylvania.

She served as Dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania from 1977 to 1992, when she left to do geriatric nursing research as a Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. In 1993 she was asked to become Interim President of the University of Pennsylvania (July 1 1993 to June 30 1994), the first woman to serve in that capacity with any Ivy League university.

She continued to focus on geriatric nursing after returning to the professoriate in 1994 and has done so ever since. In 2005 she completed five years as Director of the John A. Hartford Foundation Program: Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity, which is co-ordinated in Washington, D.C. at the American Academy of Nursing. Currently she is a consultant in leadership and organizational development.

Her research on the relationship between the recovery of hospitalized children and their parents "rooming in", received national attention and helped to permanently change attitudes and rules about parental visitation in pediatric facilities. Her later research focused on cost-effectiveness of nursing research and nurse practitioners and nursing home reform.

She is Leadership Professor Emerita, Dean Emerita and Interim President Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania and has received 13 honorary doctoral degrees as well as the prestigious Honorary Recognition Award of the American Nurses Association.

On November 30 2006, the nursing education building at the University of Pennsylvania was renamed the Claire M. Fagin Hall. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the Academy of Arts and Sciences.