Introduction:

In intensive care and emergency medicine, the development of managerial competences and their assessment is required to ensure excellence in the care of critically-ill patients. A theoretical approach to the antecedents and foundations supporting such assertion is pertinent.

Objective:

To determine the theoretical foundations on the assessment of professional managerial competences in intensive care and emergency medicine.

Methods:

A qualitative research was carried out through the review of articles from 2000 to 2023, with 90 % belonging to the latest five years. The consulted databases were Medline, Scopus and Google Scholar.

Conclusions:

The theoretical foundations start from the definitions and the emergence of the term “competences,” its classifications and the description of the elements that make it up, highlighting the importance of the interrelation among them; the above allowed visualizing the ability to unlearn as an essential and novel aspect. Management and its close relationship with the performance of intensive care specialists defines them as care managers, which represents a theoretical contribution and evidences the importance of the development of managerial competences in this specialty. It is vital to design standards as a reference for the assessment of managerial competences in the healthcare practice, if excellence is to be pursued in the care of critically-ill patients.