Trouble with finances, insurance coverage, personal and family relationships, work, school and a million other problems are common during convalescence. It is difficult for health care workers to ignore the turmoil surrounding many of their patients. By nature and training most health care professionals are caring and compassionate individuals.
Compassion can backfire on the health care worker.
An obvious example here would be a health care provider becoming emotionally involved in the multiple hardships of patients, leading to undue stress and burnout. A less than obvious example is relaxing standard procedures in an effort to improve the patient's situation. The health care provider omits or adds procedures due to extraneous problems, not as a result of clinical need. An example in chiropractic practice of relaxing the standard of care to assist the patient, could be taking a single x-ray of a spinal area. The patient in need of x-rays can't afford them, and so the doctor only takes a single view of the involved area.