In health professions education, the hidden curriculum is a set of implicit rules and expectations about how clinicians act and what they value. In fields that are very homogenous, such as rehabilitation professions, these expectations may have outsized impacts on students from minoritized backgrounds. This qualitative study examined the hidden curriculum in rehabilitation graduate programs—speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, and physical therapy—through the perspectives and experiences of 21 students from minoritized backgrounds. Semi-structured interviews explored their experiences with their programs’ hidden curricula. These revealed expectations about ways of being, interacting, and relating. Three overarching themes emerged, each reflecting tensions between conflicting values: (i) blend in but stand out; (ii) success lies in individualism, while de-prioritizing the individual; and (iii) fix the field, using your identities as a tool. When the expectations aligned with students’ expectations for themselves, meeting them was a source of pride. However, when the social expectations clashed with their own culture, dis/ability, gender, or neurotype, these tensions became an additional cognitive burden, and they rarely received mentorship for navigating it. Health professions programs might benefit from fostering students’ critical reflection on their hidden curricula and their fields’ cultural norms to foster greater belonging, agency, and identity retention.

Growing awareness of social inequities and injustices in education highlights the urgent need to address harmful mechanisms, policies, and norms within health education curricula and systems. This study examines inclusivity and exclusivity content in four fundamental nursing textbooks and contributes to the broader discourse on fostering equitable health education. A Directed Qualitative Content Analysis on 32 chapters from four fundamental nursing textbooks was systematically conducted. Seven codes within inclusivity and exclusivity themes were deductively developed from the literature. Inclusivity codes included equity language and contextualized race-based prevalence. Exclusivity codes included normalizing Whiteness in assessment, stigmatizing and negative descriptors, race-based prevalence without context, cisgenderism, and othering. Two trained analysts independently reviewed the chapters, assigning texts to these codes. Discrepancies were resolved by team consensus. A total of 118 inclusivity instances: equity language (n = 109) and race-based prevalence with context (n = 9). Exclusivity codes were more prevalent (n = 642), including normalizing Whiteness (n = 398), stigmatizing descriptors (n = 106), cisgenderism (n = 59), and othering (n = 32). The study highlights inclusive language in fundamental nursing textbooks but reveals significant exclusive language perpetuating negative generalizations, including marginalized identities and race prevalence without context. This content undermines person-centered care and hinders understanding the complex interplay between intersectionality, social justice, and social determinants of health.