Clinical ethics is defined as the ethics of clinical practice, and it deals with ethical issues arising from the ongoing, daily care for the patient. It is based on intensive connection between clinical practice and education in biomedicine, health and bioethics. According to the „Encyclopedia of Bioethics“, the most important features of clinical ethics are: focus on the questions of ethics in the continuous, daily care of the patient ; theoretical discussions about different models of ethical decisionmaking in practice ; equating the importance of ethical issues in medical practice with education and research. From these features goals of clinical ethics can be derived: development of guidelines for education, development of guidelines for research, development of models of ethical decision-making in clinical practice. This presentation will focus - on the track of the aforementioned goals - on the three key developmental moments of clinical (medical) ethics in the Croatian system of biomedicine and health care: the development of the content of medical (clinical) ethics in the curriculum of medical schools since 1991 till today ; establishment of a moral-legal framework for the conduct of research and to ensure good clinical practice, with special reference to the Croatian Act on the Protection of Patients‘ Rights from 2004, and the place and role of informed consent ; clinical ethics consultations - development, place and role of ethics committees. Finally, the authors wish to emphasize the need to approach the European (and other international) standards, on the threshold of Croatian accession to the European Union.