Physician Oversupply as a Socially Constructed Reality

This paper utilizes a social constructionist perspective to examine the widespread belief among phy'sicians during the early 1980s that an oversupply of doctors was either present or imminent. It was found that the timing and growl'th of physician beliefs in a 'physician glut during this period could not be adequately explained by net increases in the physician supply, either on an absolute level or relative to the growth of the general population. Rather, this 'fact of a phIsician surplus was found to be more fruitfully explored as an emergent social phenomenon grounded in the historical evolution of physician-suppl! themes and the particular clinical practice environment in which physicians found themselves in the late 1970s and early 1980s.