The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will announce Thursday that it's going to crack down on hospitals, for the first time ever, to prevent an epidemic of back and arm injuries among nursing employees. Nurses and nursing assistants suffer more of those debilitating injuries than any other occupation, and those injuries are caused mainly by moving and lifting patients. As NPR reported earlier this year in a five-part series, Injured Nurses , many of those workers end up having grueling operations and quitting their jobs. Yet, most hospitals have done little to prevent the injuries — even though studies show they could. OSHA chief David Michaels described his agency's new program to NPR in an exclusive interview. The public more typically hears about OSHA when the agency goes after factories where workers' arms got cut off, or construction sites where the scaffolds collapsed. But now, Michaels says, OSHA's inspectors will investigate what hospitals are doing
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