Highland Hospital of Rochester NY

The work here clusters around orthopaedics and joint replacement, minimally invasive and robotic surgery, weight-loss surgery, geriatric services, and OB/GYN, with outpatient geriatrics and acute-care floors in the mix. If you are new to practice, the door is a named residency or fellowship: ED Nurse Residency cohorts for December 2025 and May 2026 graduates (orientation beginning March 2026), plus Critical Care and Med-Surg-to-Critical-Care fellowships for new grad RNs who want high-acuity skills. You start as a Level I RN finishing Nursing Practice Orientation with roughly zero to six months post-licensure experience; Level II is the experienced step where charge and preceptor work show up under the nurse manager. Pay in public listings is uneven. One Med-Surg to Critical Care new-grad fellowship sits near $54,000–$55,000; an ED residency estimate runs about $79,200–$85,440; outpatient RN roles list $34.01–$39.43 an hour; experienced RN II acute-care estimates span roughly $65,000–$85,000. Rochester’s cost of living is a few points under the national average, with many nurses living in places like Brighton, Pittsford, or the South Wedge and driving twenty to thirty minutes. Ratios, scheduling rules, and union status are not spelled out in the materials we have—so those are questions you will want to ask on a unit tour.