This paper aimed at understanding the effects of meaning in the discourses of medical and nursing school professors concerning ethical-moral issues in formal education. This is a qualitative study based on the Discourse Analysis theory, the French line of Pêcheux, in dialogue with Habermas' theory. Discursive analysis resulted from 16 interviews with two public and private Universities' professors. Upon relating professors' discourse analysis, the mechanics of intra-discursive marks to the interdiscourse, following meaning effects were noted: the social ethical-moral emptying as transcending the university; recovering humanistic ethics when graduating students in the health field; the faculty member as a reference to the ethical-moral formation of the students; the systems' determinations as moral justification; and dialogical ethics when facing moral dilemmas. This study evidenced that discursive memory of the ethics object in teaching in the health area is still in consolidation.
Ethics; Discourse; Nursing; Medicine; Philosophy