Blog posts, online courses, and videos, oh my! The scariest month of the year, October, brought lots of new content from IHI. We created, filmed, published, and tweeted. What were the most popular items, as decided by your clicks and eyes?

Here’s a quick rundown of the top five:

• Three Myths about Improving Flow in the Emergency Department: More than 6,000 people read this blog post last month, which highlighted a safety net system that improved flow while handling double-digit growth in patient volume. Myth #1: The only way to improve flow is through physical expansion. Myth #2: You can’t improve flow without hiring new staff. For myth #3 and the details behind this impressive improvement story, head over to the IHI blog.
  
• PS 101: Introduction to Patient Safety. More than 6,000 people (6,770, to be exact) completed the most popular Open School course of the month, too. PS 101: Introduction to Patient Safety is often at the top of our course completion list, usually dueling with QI 102: How to Improve with The Model for Improvement and QI 101: Introduction to Health Care Improvement. What’s that? You’ve never taken any of the courses? Sounds like a great thing to add to a November to-do list. Explore a free sample course or learn more about using the Open School as training at your organization.
  
• Learn How to Use PDSA Cycles by Spinning Coins. You may have thought your coin spinning days ended in grade school, but it turns out the activity can help you learn about theories, predictions, and PDSA cycles. How? In a two-part video, which you can use to get QI newcomers up to speed on the importance of testing changes, IHI faculty Niñon Lewis and Rebecca Steinfield display and discuss some of the key learnings from the simple game. The new videos are part of a new collection of free IHI training materials that can breathe new life into your improvement education. (See the rest of the games on the left side of the page.)
  
• Improving Patient Experience: What’s Working, What’s Not. These are good — and big — questions, and the focus of October’s most popular WIHI audio program. A panel, led by IHI Faculty Martha Hayward, provided insight into how patients and families are feeling about their experiences with the US health care system. Are they feeling more connected? Listen to the podcast (here or on iTunes) and check out three short video clips featuring Hayward. “What I'd like people to realize,” Hayward says, “is that the patient experience rarely costs anything.”
  
• “We have to make an empty bed more valuable than a full one.” This quote from IHI President Emeritus and Senior Fellow Don Berwick was the focal point of IHI’s most popular tweet of the month. Are you following us on Twitter? We’d love to connect with you. The tweet highlighted Dr. Berwick’s Hospitals & Health Networks article on imagining a new era of health care.