Born in
Manhattan on November 25, 1926, Fagin was the younger of two daughters of Mae and Harry Mintzer, immigrants to
New York City from Poland and Russia. She elected to study nursing for a bachelor's degree in science at
Wagner College, earning her nursing degree in 1948, and then earned a master's degree in
psychiatric nursing from
Columbia University and a doctorate at
New York University. Her doctoral dissertation covered the concept of "rooming in" for parents of hospitalized children. She continued her research in this area, which influenced the perception of parental visitation in hospitals and led to rule changes allowing 24-hour visits in pediatric wings. By the time Fagin earned her nursing degree, she was working at
Seaview Hospital, where she cared for children with
tuberculosis, developing a lifelong interest in the psychiatric problems of children and psychiatric nursing in general. After working at Seaview Hospital, she worked in the
adolescent psychiatry unit at
Bellevue Hospital. When the
National Institute of Mental Health established a
clinical research facility in 1953, she became its first director of children's programs at the
National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Fagin was the director of the graduate program in psychiatric nursing at New York University from 1965 to 1969. She left in 1977 to join the
University of Pennsylvania as dean of the
School of Nursing. At Penn, Fagin developed the first nursing doctorate in the Ivy League and a PhD program as well. She also opened the first center for
nursing research in the U.S. in 1980. She is credited with leading a transformation in
nursing education by advocating that nurses should have a science-based education and graduate with bachelor's degrees. (after
Hanna Holborn Gray, who served as
acting president of Yale University from 1977 to 1978 Fagin served as president of the
National League for Nursing and as an adviser to the
World Health Organization. Fagin was an Honorary Fellow of the UK
Royal College of Nursing, was inducted into the
American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2010 ==Personal life and death==