Ehrenfeld's research in the area of continuous quality improvement and intraoperative patient safety has been supported by the
National Institutes of Health, the
Department of Defense, the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research. and the
American Medical Association. He was the founding director of the Anesthesia Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He serves on the board of trustees of the
American Medical Association. His appointments have included Assistant Professorships at
Harvard Medical School and the
Massachusetts General Hospital where he practiced anesthesiology within the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine. As of 2025, he is the director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment (AHW), senior associate dean and professor of anesthesiology in the
Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) School of Medicine. Prior to that, he was professor of anesthesiology, surgery, biomedical informatics, and health policy at
Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is the author of several books, including "Pocket Anesthesia", "Anesthesia: A Case Based Survival Guide", and "The MGH Textbook of Anesthetic Equipment" and has published extensively in the medical literature. Ehrenfeld is active in the LGBTQ community, and is a
Log Cabin Republican. He co-founded and directs the Vanderbilt Program for LGBTQ Health A commander in the U.S. Navy, Ehrenfeld serves as a medical reserve officer. ==Military service (2008–present)==