MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO: Surgical Technologist Field Guide (with swearing) Hardcover – February 15, 2026

Monkey See, Monkey Do is not a how-to book about surgery.It’s a field guide for the people who actually make surgery happen.Written by Vincent Michael Cirimele, CST, a working surgical technologist in Central Texas, this book pulls the curtain back on the operating room from the only place that really sees everything: the sterile field.Not the surgeon’s podium.Not administration’s spreadsheet.Not a nursing school brochure.The back table.This book follows the real path into surgical work.For-profit schools. Bad labs. Broken externships. Silent rules. Unwritten hierarchies. The slow education that only happens when someone finally trusts you with a scalpel in your hand and a patient on the table.Inside are the things students are never told:How power actually moves in an OR.How mistakes really happen.How anticipation matters more than speed.Why being early can be just as dangerous as being late.How sterility is a goal, not a guarantee.Why burnout isn’t weakness, it’s math.It covers the full landscape of modern surgery through lived experience, not textbooks.Orthopedics. Trauma. General surgery. ENT. Urology. GYN. Robotics. Cardiovascular. Cancer. Spine. Plastics.Not as procedures. As environments. As cultures. As pressure.It also doesn’t pretend this job is noble in a clean, inspirational way.It is technical.It is exhausting.It is funny in the way people laugh when something almost went very wrong.It is built on invisible labor.And it changes you.This book is for:• Surgical technology students• New techs trying to survive their first year• Burned-out veterans who need language for what they already feel• Nurses, residents, and surgeons who want to understand what happens on the other side of the drape• Anyone curious about how medicine actually works once the door closesThis is not hospital PR.This is the operating room, as it is lived.Messy.Brilliant.Cruel.Quiet.Precise.A survival guide for the people who stand close enough to hold the knife.HARD COVER WITH BONUS CONTENTvince.cirimele@brucevanebooks.comBruce Vane Books 2025 Austin Read more