Models for deformed proton emitters are reviewed. The non‐adiabatic coupled‐channel framework with rotational coupling and the adiabatic Nilsson‐orbit model are discussed and compared. An improvement of the adiabatic approach is obtained by taking care of the diagonal part of the Coriolis coupling. For the description of the proton radioactivity of141Ho, we investigate the role of &ggr;‐vibrational excitations in the daughter nucleus140Dy. It is shown that the coupling to triaxial degrees of freedom strongly influences theoretical predictions. © 2003 American Institute of Physics