Dr. Taylor Nielsen, DMD, is the founder and Clinical Director of Emergency Dentist, a network of weekend emergency dental clinics he started in late 2022 and has grown to seventeen locations across Georgia, California, Arizona, Arkansas and Iowa. He built the model to solve a problem every dentist knows: a patient with a toothache, a broken tooth or a dental abscess on a Saturday has nowhere to go but the hospital emergency room, and the emergency room cannot fix a tooth.

The son of a military oral surgeon, Dr. Nielsen grew up around dentistry. He completed his undergraduate studies at BYU-Idaho and earned his Doctor of Dental Medicine from the OHSU School of Dentistry in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. He began practicing in August 2018 as an associate at Maxus Dental in Aloha, Oregon. In 2019 he purchased Dentistry 801 Grand in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, where he practiced as an owner dentist and, in late 2022, opened the first Emergency Dentist clinic inside his own office. In 2025 he founded Tooth Haven Pediatric Dentistry in Ankeny, Iowa.

Dr. Nielsen practiced clinically from 2018 until stepping back to lead the network full time. Today he sets the clinical protocols every Emergency Dentist location follows for pain control, dental infections, emergency extractions and same-day treatment, and he trains the dentists and teams who deliver that care through monthly meetings and one-on-one coaching. He has coached more than 100 dentists and created an 8-credit continuing education course on emergency dental practice, hosted by OHSU. He also serves as Clinical Director of Emergency Dentist on the executive team of Apex Dental Collective, a group of independent dentists who share systems and best practices.

He holds an active Iowa dental license (No. DDS-09626) and is a member of the American Dental Association and the Iowa Dental Association. He reviews the patient education published on this website for clinical accuracy; see how content is reviewed.

Dr. Nielsen lives in Lehi, Utah, with his wife McKenzie, whom he married in 2012, and their two kids, Penny and Rowan. When he is not working with dental teams he is mountain biking, skiing, hiking, or out to dinner with his wife.