Introduction: when surgical instrumentation became a professional career in 2000, the fields of labor action were diversified into administrative, managerial, teaching and commercial management areas. Objective: to characterize the work performance of professionals graduated from the University Foundation of Health Sciences, graduates between 2006 and 2010. Materials and methods: descriptive cross-sectional study. A survey was applied to 231 graduates of surgical instrumentation to know the labor characteristics in performance, salary and time it took to get employment. Results: the area with the greatest professional practice is the assistance 55.6%, followed by advice and commercial management 20.4%, administrative 8.2%, 0.5% work in teaching and 15.3% are in combined areas: assistance and teaching, care and management commercial, administrative and advisory of management, commercial management and teaching. Conclusions: the result suggests creating discussion spaces to reform the curriculum and thus train them in administrative, managerial, marketing and public health areas. The labor insertion of the graduates in the labor field is considered fast (77% in less than six months).