Excel or Access for surgery booking system?

Hi there,

I'm kind of stumped here and am getting in a muddle. I've got some reasonable excel skills but haven't used it regularly for nearly 8 years so i'm rusty. I do, however, feel pretty confident experimenting but i'm struggling with user error here.

I need a system to book people in for surgery. I have an excel spreadsheet with tabs for each month, then dates in column a (weekdays only), name, some patient details, reasons for the op, etc etc. it doesn't really do too much calculating other than alerting us if there is more than 3 ops per day. Wht i didn't bank on is how little drs know about computers. They're constantly opening the file at the same time as someone else (mostly because that someone else hasn't saved and closed it and has then walked off), or opening it as read only and then not realising so the data is lost. this means that come the date of the op we're often surprised as either too many people turn up or nobody does.

I was thinking of using access to create some kind of database but i'm REALLY rusty on that and i'm not too sure where i'd even start. Would i be able to create forms in excel? Could multiple users add data at the same time whilst i fiddle in the background if needed?

Sorry if this is rambly, i'm under pressure and not as smart as i thought i was!

Cheers,
Nerd