Doctors Nova Scotia welcomes new President and President-Elect
Dr. Shelly McNeil of Halifax, N.S., was installed as Doctors Nova Scotia’s President for 2025–26 during the association’s annual conference on Saturday, June 7, 2025.
During her term, she will continue to focus on stabilizing primary care for Nova Scotians by working with health-system partners.
Dr. McNeil is an infectious diseases specialist based in Halifax. Although she loves her job, Dr. McNeil said she struggles with balancing the growing number of patients needing care with the time and resources available.
“If I could do one thing, I would ensure all Nova Scotians had access to a team-based, family physician–led, primary care practice,” she said.
“As a specialist, I want to focus on treating complex infectious diseases, but oftentimes I’m also providing essential primary care to patients with no family doctor. Their primary care needs would be better met by a family doctor.”
Her practice involves inpatient infectious diseases consultations at the QEII and IWK Health women’s services. She also works in ambulatory clinics at the Dickson Building and in the new Bayers Lake Outpatient Centre.
Dr. McNeil was the Senior Medical Director of the COVID-19 Planning and Implementation Network, a multidisciplinary NSH group comprised of clinical and operational leaders who guided the health authority’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The group worked with system partners to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on patients, their support people, physicians and staff.
She is a member of the Senior Leadership Team at NSH, where she serves as the Senior Medical Director of the Emerging and Re-emerging Infections Network (formerly the COVID-19 Planning and Implementation Network). The network guides the ongoing NSH response to COVID-19 and to new and re-emerging infectious diseases, such as measles, and ensures preparedness for future pandemics.
As a child, Dr. McNeil followed her military father to postings across Canada, spending her summers in Kentville each year. She returned to Nova Scotia and graduated from Dalhousie Medical School in 1994, going on to complete core internal medicine training at Dalhousie in 1997. That same year, she married Dr. Tim Mailman, a fellow Dalhousie resident studying pediatrics. (Dr. Mailman is now a pediatric infectious diseases expert at IWK Health.)
Their daughter, Emma and her partner Curtis are expecting their first children, twins! Soon Dr. McNeil will enjoy her most important title: grandmother.
Also on Saturday, Doctors Nova Scotia members endorsed Dr. Amanda MacDonald Green as President-elect for 2025–26. She is a family physician who practices in Windsor, Nova Scotia. In addition to serving two terms on the Doctors Nova Scotia Board she was the Board's representative on the Policy and Health Issues Committee. Dr. MacDonald Green is an active member of the Section of Physician Leaders and she has completed several formal leadership programs. She is a strong advocate for medical learners and she has supported the association in working to reduce physician administrative burden. Her term as president will begin in June 2026.