While completing his training as a naval flight surgeon and later when he was a general surgery resident, Dr. Jack Fulmer sometimes filled in for family doctors in small rural towns in the Florida panhandle.

For Dr. Fulmer, who grew up in a farming family in northwest Ohio, it was an eye-opening experience. General practitioners in that part of Florida were medical one-man bands, treating everything from colds to heart attacks. They delivered babies, performed surgery and set broken bones.  It wasn’t unusual to see 250 patients in a day. Payment might come in the form of produce or bartered services.

That experience shaped many of Fulmer’s attitudes about medicine. To this day, he said, he considers himself to be a country doctor. Most importantly, he learned the value of good communication.

“Your job is to listen,” he said. “Listen to your patient. They are telling you what is wrong with them. What they tell you is the most important tool you have.”

As a new member of the Lincoln County Healthcare Board of Trustees, Fulmer brings that willingness to listen and a wide range of administrative and clinical experience to a board focused on improving the health of the entire community.

After finishing his service in the Navy, where he served as a flight surgeon in Attack Squadron 44, Fulmer maintained a busy general surgery practice and also served St. Luke’s Hospital, a 279-bed private hospital, in a variety of administrative posts, including medical director, chair of the department of surgery and president of the executive medical staff.

He also held leadership posts at the Mayo Clinic, which opened a facility in Jacksonville in 1986, including chair of the surgical committee and chair of the hospital integration team, which involved the planning, building and licensure of the Mayo Hospital, Mayo Clinic in Florida.

A move to Maine began about eight years ago with a spur-of-the-moment trip with his wife, Holly, following a medical conference in Boston.

After taking the Downeaster Amtrak train to Portland, they rented a car and began exploring the coast. In East Boothbay they noticed an old farmhouse on the Mill Pond that was for sale. Dr. Fulmer called the real estate agent and bought it on the spot.  It is a decision he has never regretted.

“This is the friendliest place I have ever lived in my life,” he said. “It is easy to feel like part of the community.”

Fulmer is active in the Boothbay Region Land Trust,  American Legion Post 36, where he is a volunteer cook during public breakfasts, and the Boothbay Railway Village, where he works each summer Saturday as a licensed steam engineer.

He became interested in Lincoln County Healthcare soon after he arrived. Like every health system in the country, Lincoln County Healthcare is embroiled in an environment that is forcing change, said Fulmer. While that process is difficult, it also carries with it many opportunities, he said.

Fulmer wants to make sure that the healthcare system that comes through that change not only has the trust of the community, but deserves that trust.

While officially retired, he continues to work full-time for the Mayo Clinic redesigning the appointment calendar for a clinic of about 350 doctors. The goal is to significantly improve patient satisfaction by streamlining the appointment making process.

He and Holly, a retired critical care nurse, have four grown children.