I'm a nursing student and my professor was performing a bed bath, linen change, and wound care with our class on a patient who was unresponsive and obese. It was difficult cleaning and moving the patient, and the patient wasn't alert. It took 6 of us because of the patient's size. Problems with this patient: when lifting a flap of the patient's fat to clean, a bug jumped out which surprised us, and the professor immediately put us into PPE. The patient also had impaired skin integrity of the backside because of her size, inability to reposition on her own, and incontinence. The patient's hair was supposedly extremely matted and dirty and uncombable, and the professor got a bandage roll scissor and started cutting the patient's hair off, without consent of the nurses or the patient. The patient had near shoulder length hair and it ended up chopped up to about three inches in length. I did not personally see the condition of the patient's hair because there were 6 of us and I was at the end of the bed. I proceeded to ask the professor why she was cutting the patient's hair, and another student shushed me. I was confused and waited until post-conference to ask the professor. Another student said that I shouldn't say out loud next time because the patient would hear me. I felt frustrated because isn't it the right of the patient to know any treatment, regardless medical or cosmetic done to her? Isn't going behind her back violating her autonomy, despite her lack of alertness? This was a med-surg unit.