By Wednesday Ms Bailey was considering driving to Auckland when she called Dr Taylor again and he offered her an appointment that day.
While at his practice she also saw a child with four smashed teeth and a man who she believed needed a tooth extraction.
"Tauranga is a growing city, the hospital services a huge area when you consider Mt Maunganui, Papamoa, Te Puke, Katikati and Matamata. Why then is the emergency dental care so inadequate?" she said.
Dr Taylor said opening the surgery, starting equipment and calling on nurses meant dentists often waited until two or three people required care after-hours.
He said dentists in Tauranga used to work an on-call roster, covering about two weekends each a year with patients directed to them via the hospital emergency department. The system, which included about 20 dentists, was stopped about 11 years ago when Team Dental opened and opted to provide all week coverage. Ms Bailey works in administration at the Tauranga Hospital emergency department and knows hers is not an isolated case.
"So often we get poor people coming in during the night in absolute agony," she said.
She said doctors could offer pain relief and a prescription for antibiotics but patients were "stuck with it until the morning."
Team Dental practice manager Sarah Lockett said the 2nd Ave surgery was the only one in the Western Bay open seven days a week, and at this time of year the demand for after-hours dental care far exceeded what was available.
Ms Lockett said the phone was running red hot with calls from patients needing teeth removed, with tooth infections or having injured themselves in a car crash or holiday-related accident.
Dentists were also treating children in acute pain with abscesses while dental nurses took a break during the school holidays.
The practice was also brimming with the overflow from Whakatane and Rotorua where a rostered after hours service was recently canned and the patients were now being referred to Tauranga. "We tend to get absolutely swamped and we just see as many as we can. I send away more patients than we book in. A lot of dentists are closed now until the 16th," Ms Lockett said. There were a few practices that opened on Saturday mornings but usually these were fully-booked by regular patients wanting to see their own dentist outside of working hours.
If a patient had swelling of the face or neck or a child was in pain they would be seen that day, otherwise they faced a lengthy wait. On Monday there was one dentist on at Team Dental and they saw 25 to 30 patients, she said.
She said pain relief and antibiotics could be sought after-hours from Accident & Healthcare, in the same complex, which was open until 9pm or after that from the emergency department at Tauranga Hospital. Ms Lockett said Ms Bailey would have been asked if her face or neck was swelling and if not she could well have been asked to wait, despite being in pain.
"We do get yelled at quite a lot, they're in pain, it's not pleasant. I think the service we provide is pretty good," she said.
Bay of Plenty District Health Board clinical director of emergency medicine Dr Derek Sage confirmed simple dental problems such as toothache, tooth abscess, broken, loose or missing teeth (trauma) and various disease conditions of the gums were always best managed by a dentist. "We merely see, assess and give simple treatment but they always require a visit to the dentist afterwards in regular hours. All that we do is provide some analgesia and antibiotics as appropriate," he said.
The Bay of Plenty Times phoned Willows Dental Centre and received a recorded message advising that the clinic was closed until Monday January 9, and to contact Team Dental.
