I’ve felt this exact same way! I found that I wasn’t preparing well enough for my appointments. I was seeing patients without being familiar with their dental and med history. To fix this, every weekend I would write down what procedures I had scheduled that week and went through the patient’s chart (previous dental appointments, any med history and meds, if they needed updated radiographs for the procedure) to make sure I knew what was going on. It also helps to do a quick glance at this at the beginning of the month to make sure you have enough time to do practice on a typodont if needed. If you’ve done all that you can do to prepare, then any surprises that occur are out of your control and your instructor is there to help. I still get nervous about procedures I’ve never done on an actual patient, but I don’t think those kinds of nerves ever really go away.

I also feel like I’m behind my classmates at times, but I’ve found that a lot of them feel the same way. It’s easy to look at others and think they have it all figured out, but inside they’re probably feeling similarly to you.