The following literature review examines 17 papers on physician response to drug safety alerts. Drug safety alerts are overridden by clinicians in 49% to 96% of cases. The alerting system may contain error-producing conditions like low specificity, low sensitivity, unclear information content, unnecessary workflow disruptions, and unsafe and inefficient handling. These may result in active failures of the physician, like ignoring alerts, misinterpretation, and incorrect handling. Efforts to improve patient safety by increasing correct handling of drug safety alerts should focus on the error-producing conditions in software and organization.