Dr. Fairman’s dedication to promoting health equity through historical knowledge is evidenced through her research on nursing and nurses influence on human and civil rights issues. Dr. Fairman’s extensive scholarship elucidates the experiences of nurses of color and the impact of racism. Her work has also shed light on the dynamics and effects of gender and professional hierarchy on the profession, its members, and their capacity to contribute. 

 

Her groundbreaking scholarship has inspired and informed policy and practice. Notably, Dr. Fairman’s award-winning book, Critical Care Nursing: A History, contributed to the development of the federal Nurse Reinvestment Act of 2002. This work provides an analytical approach to the development of the critical care nursing specialty through archival records and interviews to disentangle the social, political, and economic factors leading to the development of this complex clinical specialty. Similarly, Dr. Fairman’s landmark book, Making Room in the Clinic, studies the history of the nurse practitioner (NP) movement. This work created an important platform for addressing policy, systemic, and professional barriers to advanced nursing practice. Her historical research and evidence of interdisciplinary and collaborative work in the NP movement ultimately informed and reshaped state scope of practice regulations across the U.S. This research led to her role as a historian and special consultant to the Institute of Medicine’s (now National Academy of Medicine’s) seminal The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report in 2011, as the ANA/AAN/ANF National Academy of Medicine Distinguished Nurse Scholar-in-Residence. 

 

Additionally, Dr. Fairman was influential in breaking down scope of practice barriers and shifting the paradigm in nursing PhD programs towards a stronger focus on advancing equity through her work as Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Future of Nursing Scholars Program. This important program supported 46 nursing schools and saw more than 200 PhD graduates, significantly supporting the PhD nursing pipeline.

 

Dr. Fairman’s thoughtful application of nursing’s history to contemporary and emerging issues is apparent in the leadership and advisory roles that she has played throughout her career. Notably, under her leadership, the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at Penn Nursing became the preeminent center for scholarship in nursing history. Dr. Fairman’s service as the Center’s Director was critical in expanding the extensive archival collection of photographs, artifacts, and the personal and professional papers of leaders, clinicians, schools of nursing, nursing organizations, and other health centers. Importantly, she has focused on collecting the records of nursing’s diverse history, such as those of the Mercy-Douglass Hospital School of Nursing, a diploma School for Black nurses in Philadelphia, and minority nursing organizations including the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, to recognize the contributions of nurses of color. 

 

Dr. Fairman’s many accolades include her selection as a Rockefeller foundation Bellagio Scholar In Residence, induction as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 1995 and her induction into the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Researcher Hall of Fame. She was the first nurse to win the Garrison Award, the highest recognition from the American Association of the History of Medicine.