[5][6] A request for a summer internship in 1987 led to a position as a legislative assistant for health matters for Senator Quentin Burdick (D-ND),[6] who later made her chief of staff.

After Burdick's death in 1992,[5] she worked for a month as a consultant for the Global Programme on AIDS at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland,[7] then took the position of chief of staff for Senator Kent Conrad, which she held until 1996.

[5][6][8] In 1996 she returned to academia and served as professor and director of the Center for Health Policy, Research, and Ethics at George Mason University.

[2] Wakefield served on the Institute of Medicine (IoM) committee that produced the report, To Err is Human in 1999, and Crossing the Quality Chasm in 2001.

[8] She served a three-year term as a member of the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality from 2001 to 2004.