Quain also was a founder and president of the North Dakota Tuberculosis Association, and helped improve standards for nurses' training in the state.

[1] Because Quain's parents could not pay her medical school expenses, she taught, did bookkeeping, and organized a concert tour for a Swedish musical ensemble to earn her tuition.

[1] When she graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1898, she became the first woman from North Dakota to hold a doctor of medicine degree.

[1] She met Eric Peer Quain, a surgeon, in an operating room at St. Alexis Hospital in Bismarck, and the couple married in 1903.

[1] She served as regional director of the Medical Woman's National Association from 1933 to 1934, for the states of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa.