Courses focusing on the legal and ethical considerations identify all of the rules and regulations which personnel within a company must follow. Because companies cannot rely on employees to recriminate themselves, managers are trained to identify potential legal or policy issues in the behavior or completed work of their subordinates. Within the nursing field, this ranges from the manner in which a nurse treats a specific patient, to the veracity of reports and other legal documents produced by a nurse or other employee of the care facility.
Since the advent of computer technologies, nursing has become more and more automated, particularly as it relates to the organization and reporting of nurses as they treat patients and assist doctors. Courses focusing on Information Management Systems generally teach nurses how to use different programs or tools that aid in the automation of the nursing profession.
Just as there are different branches and departments of doctors within a hospital, so too are there different branches and departments of nurses within a hospital. Generally, each department receives a departmental budget overseen by a nurse whose responsibility is to manage the budget, particularly departmental expenditures. Courses focusing on financial management enable nurses to plan spending, and generate expenditure reports.
Perhaps the most nebulous of the types of leadership courses nurses can take, organizational behavior courses focus on team-building and morale maintenance within a department. These courses provide nurses with the skills to assess how employees work together, and ways to improve the employees' working conditions and attitudes. They are generally theoretical in nature.